Farmer Wants A Wife favourites Will Simpson and Jess Cova caused quite the stir in Sydney’s eastern suburbs recently, when Will’s tractor turned up parked in Double Bay, leaving locals stopping to work out exactly what was going on.
Will told Woman’s Day the whole thing played on his very real fish-out-of-water feeling when he swaps the farm for the city. “The whole thing was based around ‘you don’t live in the city, so why drive a tractor?’,” he said.
Bystanders had a field day, with some convinced they’d stumbled onto a Farmer Wants A Wife filming day, while others were less impressed by a tractor blocking traffic. Jess, who arrived to “rescue” Will in Honda’s new ZR-V – the perfect city-sized alternative to Will’s tractor – said the reaction was priceless.
“We had bystanders who were like, ‘they’re probably just filming for Farmer Wants A Wife‘,” Jess said. “We even had a few old Bettys come up to Will and ask if he’s got a partner. It was pretty funny.”
But behind the headlines, the pair have far bigger news on the horizon: their wedding is just months away!
Speaking about their proposal story – the pair got engaged in February 2025 – Will revealed he’d been planning the moment for months, secretly working with a Sydney jeweller over FaceTime to design Jess’s ring – going so far as to save his number under a fake name in his phone.
Jess, meanwhile, had no idea the ring had been sitting in their house for two weeks. She admitted she’d even tried to get her workmates in on a plan to catch Will out. “I remember telling people at work we had a filming day coming up, and a few of the girls joked, ‘oh, he might propose, get your nails done’,” Jess said. “I didn’t have my nails done and I was like, ‘damn it!’”
Will went to extraordinary lengths to throw Jess off the scent, at one point flatly denying he was proposing just hours before he did exactly that. “I sat her down, dead serious, and told her I wasn’t proposing,” Will admitted.
The couple then filmed what looked like a simple picnic catch-up for the show – but it was anything but. Will had spent a week transforming his favourite spot on the farm, building an arbour from an old cattle yard loading ramp with help from his family.
“It’s all still there now, because I haven’t taken it down,” Will said. “It was a full family affair – everyone knew except Jess.”
Now the countdown is on for their destination wedding at McGuigan House in New South Wales’ Hunter Valley – the region where the couple first met during the speed dates on the 2022 season of Farmer Wants A Wife. “It feels quite nice, like a full circle moment, to bring it back there,” Jess said.
The pair are planning a black-tie affair with a garden feel, a deliberate departure from the farm setting fans might expect. “I didn’t want a farm wedding,” Will said. “I wanted somewhere that was still nice, green, and had a nice garden – somewhere special.”
Guests will include several familiar faces from the Farmer Wants A Wife family, with Jess confirming fellow alumni Harry Lloyd and fiancée Tess Brookman, along with Benjamin Jackson and wife Hannah Gracey, on the guest list.
After the wedding, the newlyweds are jetting off on an epic 10-week European and American honeymoon, taking in the UK, Ireland, France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and a sprawling US road trip before settling back into farm life – with kids firmly on the agenda.
“We want to start a family pretty soon after the wedding,” Will said. “Why not have a beautiful once-in-a-lifetime experience first?”
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